Facebook Instant Articles: Why Use It and How To Track It

Go where your readers are – this is the main cause for using Facebook’s Instant Articles.

Everyone should become a media company – this is the mantra said by marketers for years now. No matter you are a brand, a company, ecommerce, you need to broadcast content to your readers. Facebook’s Instant Articles is a solution for broadcasters. But why should you use it and how to measure your performance?

What is Facebook Instant Articles?

Content on caffeine

If you have a blog or any platform where you usually publish content, you can use Facebook’s Instant Articles (FBIA). FBIA works like any other shared article on Facebook, the difference is that it is Instant and comes directly from your blog or any other broadcasting site you have. FBIA appear immediately on the Timeline, if the user clicks on it, there’s no waiting for load-up, it appears instantly on the device used for reading. It is also more interactive, responsive and has its own design and customized appearance.

Go where your readers are

Why you need to use it? It is simple. When you share a content on Facebook, let’s say your blog’s article shared on your Facebook page, users will less likely to click on it if it’s not an FBIA. It is slower, needs time to load-up and diverts the users out from Facebook. FBIA however lets them stay on Facebook, continue to browse on their own Timeline but in the meantime, lets the broadcaster (you) keep the sort-of-original branding of their company.

It is also a better solution to reach more people. Users don’t need to go to your site, they just consume your content straight from Facebook. In the end, it is better to share your content where your audience is.

How do you measure Facebook Instant Articles performance?

Insights that matter most

Facebook Instant Articles are articles shared through your Facebook Page so you can measure their performance directly on the Facebook Page’s Insights. Of course, these insights are just the ones that matter the most.

You measure your FBIA performance with three important metrics:

• Clicks: how many users clicked on the article.
• Time Spent: how much time spent on the reading of the article
• Scroll Depth: the amount of percentages users scrolled down in the article

If you think about it, these are the most important metrics to define your content’s performance. Comments and shares are measured as any Facebook updates’ metric obviously.

For most publishers, these insights however not enough. Also, most of the broadcasters have their own analytics ecosystem in place already. Fortunately, Facebook lets another analytics providers in.

Third-party integration

Most of the analytics platforms work the same: users add a tracking code to a digital property and the analytics platform tracks the activity on the property with the tracking code.

It works the same with Facebook Instant Articles. You can insert your analytics tracking code from most of the analytics platforms to your Facebook Instant Articles. Facebook supports almost any platforms, including Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Adobe, Nielsen, SimpleReach, ComScore and many more. There is also an API that you can use to track the metrics on your own.

Content that matters

Content distribution is a new trend in content marketing. It is simple why: content should be shared where your audience catches it. It is effortless and more efficient. With Facebook Instant Articles this is possible and you don’t need to compromise on performance measurement either.

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